Last Sunday we sang one of my favorite hymns, a verse of which I’ve often used in my daily quiet time since I was in grad school:

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of Thy peace. 

Much of unhealthy Christianity centers around power - but not the power of the Holy Spirit! Unhealthy power is centered in leadership that determines who is in and who is out, and the sign of belonging is often expressed in “boundary markers.” Boundary makers are those things that create a clear division between “us” and “them.” They can be as diverse as dictating the way women wear their hair to forbidding any criticism of a “pastor’s authority.”  Those who violate the human-made (and often literally “man made") boundaries are no longer welcome. 

I had a conversation with a young atheist a while back that reminded me of our need to be able to understand and to clearly express what we believe. He gave me his reasons for not believing and mostly I said, “You haven’t really read the Bible. You’re just repeating what you heard someone else say.” (He’s a lazy atheist – he won’t do the work himself). 

Deep inside the prison vaults in Edinburgh castle you’ll find scratched into the door one of the oldest depictions of the American flag outside of the states. Among the pirates and soldiers from all over the world that were held as prisoners in those dungeons was an American prisoner of war in 1780. Nothing is known about him, but his mark remains some 250 years later.

When the Bible says that Jesus turned water into wine and Paul told Timothy to drink a little wine for his stomach’s sake, I hear a lot of preachers twisting themselves into pretzels trying to explain the context of these passages and turn wine into Welch’s. But these same preachers will read phrases like “women should stay silent in church” and “I do not allow a woman to teach” and declare they are the clear, plain and obvious word of the Lord – no context needed. 

Many of you may not know that for the last 4 years or so I’ve been co-leading a weekly men’s group that meets on either Monday afternoons or Tuesday mornings. All of these fellows have had difficult pasts – sometimes because of their own choices, but sometimes as a result of others’ choices. Self-esteem is a serious issue with many of them. A few weeks ago I was teaching from the early chapters of Genesis and a question jumped out at us that I hadn’t really considered before. And, honestly, I haven’t been able to turn it loose since then. 

Someone recently asked me what my vision was for Christ Church.

It’s a good question. 

And there are a variety of ways to answer a question about vision. The usual way I’ve heard vision expressed is in terms of, to be a little crass, “butts, bills, and baptisms” (in other words, attendance, income, and conversions). 

Since I am away this week and after a conversation reflecting on last week’s Pastor’s note, Kim volunteered to write a guest note for our newsletter: 

From my earliest memories my grandmother led the music at my little church, and each Sunday we sang the Doxology in the service. Sometimes she incorporated responsive readings in her worship planning which were found in the back of the hymnal. I can also remember watching her toward the end of the preaching as she thumbed through the hymnal trying to find an “altar call” song that would align in some way with whatever the preacher had preached. There was not much preplanning or intentionality about worship services. I don’t know that she ever met with the pastor to plan anything. What was intentional was the rather “spur of the moment” and “Spirit led” quality of each week’s service. That was the liturgy. I became curious about other church liturgy later in my life. 

I was 14 years old the first time I played piano for congregational singing. For some reason, our regular pianist couldn’t finish the service, so Dad, who was directing, looked at me and said, “Come here.” 

I was on an island off the coast of Turkey, praying with and for anyone who stopped by our missions table. One lady from Bulgaria came to me for prayer. I didn’t speak Bulgarian and she didn’t speak English, but we both spoke just enough German for me to understand that she wanted me to pray for her father’s healing. It was a struggle, but we managed it!

Blame it on Babel. 

For me, one of Christianity’s mysteries is why the Ascension of Jesus doesn’t get as much attention as Easter or Christmas.

I never thought much about Ascension until about 10 years ago when  I made the mistake of going to Amish country on Ascension Day (which is always on a Thursday). They were shut up tight! For the Amish, Ascension Day is a holy day and they spend it in worship. So I did some reflecting on just what it means that Jesus ascended — here’s some of it and I’ll get into more of it Sunday. 

Some of my favorite memories as a young minister were around my senior pastor’s breakfast table while we were going through some discipleship training. We would meet at 7:00 AM on a Tuesday, which was great for our youth minister, who led the group, for our pastor’s wife, and for me because we were all morning people. My day typically began at 5:00 AM anyway, so 7:00 AM was prime time for me! 

However, the senior pastor and the children’s ministry guy were not morning people at all and would sit at the table like zombies! 

I’ve written about how we had so many people in and out of our home when I was growing up that we joked that ours was the “Jackson Home for Lost Boys and Wayward Women.” 

Well, now I can add to that: “The Jackson Home for Lost Boys, Wayward Women, and Sick Pups.”

You all know I love classic movies and try to catch them whenever they’re shown on the “big screen.” One year, the Monaco at Bridge Street was showing the 1962 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

I wasn’t much of a Mr. Rogers fan when I was little. He was nice enough, and I liked his opening song, but when he broke out the hand puppets, I was gone. I mean, I could turn to Sesame Street and those guys – Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, Kermit – were REAL. 

But the older I got, the more I appreciated Mr. Rogers’ wisdom.

I have to write things down.

This isn’t a new thing, so I can’t blame it on old age. I learned back at the first church I served back in the 1980s that, especially if it's right before the Sunday morning service, if I need to add a request or announcement in the service, I’ve got to write it down.

I’ve used a detail of Michalangelo’s famous painting of the creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling as my Facebook cover photo off and on for years. I’m sure you recognize it. It’s God’s finger reaching out to Adam’s finger.

While talking with a friend recently, I was struggling for a description of the sort of things that pass for Bible studies, and the following rolled off my tongue: “Oooy, gooey, rich and chewy inside” and the other person, without dropping a beat, replied, “Tender cakey, golden flaky outside.”

In writing about the potential negative effects of social media, I brought up one of the myths that keeps making its rounds: certain important books of the Bible were left out by the Catholic church, and in particular, the book of Enoch.

Back in the dark ages, when I was at the University of Alabama, my teacher congratulated us for choosing communications as our major. “The future will belong to communications,” he told us. “As technology progresses, our computers will get smaller and smaller. They will combine with mobile phones and will eventually fit into the palms of our hands.”